In order to represent to customers an amount of commodity that is offered for sale within packages, it has become standard practice to identify a weight, volume, number of units, or size of the product contained within the packaging. Typically, the labeling of such packaging defining the contents therein is controlled by the commodity vendors, whether at the retail, distribution, or manufacturing level. Methods have therefore been put in place to ensure that the amount of product contained within the packaging is accurately stated, and, in particular, contains at least as much product as is represented on the respective packaging. Vendors have also employed techniques to ensure compliance with governmental regulations, as well as to ensure that the amount of product contained within the packaging is not significantly understated.
Many products, such as those offered for sale in, for example, grocery stores, are indicated as being packaged by weight. One method for determining the amount of product contained within packaging is described in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “Handbook 133”. This commonly utilized technique obtains the net weight of the product contained within the packaging by subtracting the weight of the packaging from the gross weight of the combination of the product and the packaging. The weight of the product packaging is typically referred to as the “tare” weight, and is determined by the methodology described in Handbook 133, and specifically by obtaining several examples of the product/packaging combination, removing the product from the packaging, drying the packaging if necessary, and weighing each package without the product contained therewithin. The tare is then computed as the average of the package weight values obtained as described above.
The above-described method, however, generalizes the packaging characteristics, and fails to analyze the impact that each packaging component has upon the overall tare value. As such, inconsistencies in individual package component weights, and the overall effect that such inconsistencies have on the stated product weight may not be realized until long after the inconsistencies occur, if ever. The conventional methods further fail to provide a mechanism for tracking package component weights over time and, as such, fail to enable corrective action in predicting and maintaining accurate product net weight values stated on the packaging, as well as standardizing packaging among uses in distinct applications and/or locations.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to provide a method for testing and analyzing the net weight of packaged materials that individually analyzes and accounts for each packaging component in the computation of a summed tare value.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a summed tare value in the computation of net weight, which summed tare value is obtained from the average weights of each individual packaging component.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a method for testing and analyzing net weight of packaged goods that enables detection of inconsistencies in individual packaging component weights.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for testing and analyzing the net weight of packaged goods that accounts for change in weight over time of the packaging so that an accurate assessment of the package may be made as it stands at the time of purchase.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a packaged component testing methodology that enables the standardization of product packaging among uses in distinct applications and/or locations.